Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online.
Around the anniversary of the public defaming of her husband, a wife called the woman who did the defaming, offering her an opportunity to apologize.
When the woman is the wife of a Supreme Court justice and a political activist, that rises to the top of the news. It also invites an opportunity for a rewriting of history.
Because the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings were 19 years ago, it is worth digging into the newspaper archives to refresh our memories.
Not only the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, but also Americans around the country listened to Thomas. We listened to Hill. We listened to women who worked with Thomas. We believed Thomas. And I don't just mean the men on the committee or the mostly male Senate. A New York Times/CBS News poll found that 24 percent sided with Hill.
But we have busy lives and forget these things when it's not our husband whose name was tarnished. And so by the very next year, a U.S.News & World Report poll had 38 percent believing Hill. It would become a 50-50 split. Anita Hill became an icon for the left and a rallying point for Democrats at the 1992 Democratic Convention at Madison Square Garden.
The news of a phone call is a convenient opportunity for those who want to see a different kind of year of the woman derailed. For them, it's a delightful distraction for those who want to run with their storyline from 19 years ago. It's a gift to women who were elected, gender-carding their way to the Senate, a year later who now are in the political races of their lives in California and Washington state. But let's make sure we rewind all the way to 1991, not 1992 -- the year a mythology of Anita Hill being a twice-abused victim at the hands of an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee helped elect Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray.
In political mythology, Clarence Thomas became guilty simply because he was accused. Republicans moved on because he was on the Supreme Court and so the battle had been won. But you can see how if you're his wife, you might have a harder time letting an injustice -- with all of its Democratic-staff, interest-group and media complicity -- slide.
Because Mrs. Thomas is an active supporter of and organizer in the Tea Party movement, it's convenient to run with the news of her phone call as an opportunity to use her as the poster of the angry Tea Partier. And here they've hit on something -- not that she's angry, but that she's not comfortable with being complicit in injustice. A wise man once said that "our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." I think you can disagree with Ginni Thomas' politics and Clarence Thomas' jurisprudence, and believe Anita Hill, and still respect that motivation in both the activism -- and phone calls -- of Ginni Thomas.
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